


Like a Bright Exhalation in the Evening, part 11

by raedbard



Series: Like a Bright Exhalation in the Evening [11]
Category: The West Wing
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-01
Updated: 2008-07-01
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there are a series of confessions and a series of not-dates, various people not our protagonists prove themselves omniscient, the rules are never the same ones you believed you were making, large quantities of alcohol are consumed again, children enter the equation in more than one way, and new paths become a little clearer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Bright Exhalation in the Evening, part 11

**Author's Note:**

> This goes from 3.16, 'The U.S. Poet Laureate' to somewhere near the end of S3.
> 
> (Though I do plan to finish -- taking the story up to S7 -- this series one day, as yet this is the last chapter.)

1.

Sam's hands are shaking as he picks up the print-out. He folds the paper in half, without thinking, then unfolds it again and smoothes it out as best he can between his fingers; he doesn't want to go to Leo with a soiled confession prop. This thing is dirty enough.

He'll be doing the rounds with this all night, he imagines. An appointment with Leo, one with CJ and eventually (or more likely sooner than he would prefer) one with the President. An announcement at staff tomorrow, letting Ginger and Bonnie and Donna in on the fact that they're coming to work every day, again, with someone whose would-be assassin might end up hitting them instead.

They will expect - they will take it for granted - that he will have already told his boss, the White House Director of Communications, who is busy pacing around his office ignoring the briefing material on landmines which he borrowed, without permission, from Sam's files, trying to figure out the right words to use to talk to another person who lives on their words. The Poet Laureate is visiting them tomorrow and Sam only felt angry when he interrupted Toby in the middle of his surreptitious adoration of that woman's last collection: Toby quickly, clumsily, folding the New York Times in half and laying it over the slim book of poems that Sam couldn't help but love, looking up at Sam with a blush climbing in his cheeks which at least means he has the good grace to be embarrassed, even though that doesn't make Sam feel any better.

In a few hours their positions will reverse, and Sam will stand in front of his boss and admit that a few weeks ago he had another of those nights on which the world turned; that he got an email which will probably end up pulling them further apart and breaking the bright red thread which has already frayed so thin and was once so strong. The persistent thread of hope, running from Sam across to Toby and back again, first secretly, lately furtive and now to be cut forever. And Sam can't help being angry with him when he hears Toby muttering poetry under his breath, practising lines for a woman who has always reminded Sam of his ex-wife and blushing like a schoolboy.

But that is for later.

He looks at his watch and curses under his breath. He smoothes the centre crease out of the paper one more time, and then makes for Leo's office.

Sam doesn't see Toby, watching him go: dark eyes in a dark room, nothing like as oblivious as they have seemed.

*

Leo holds up his hands as soon as Sam opens his mouth.

"Kid, Josh has more or less already filled me in, so there's really no need for the full confession. In fact I'm pretty sure I don't want to know."

Leo, look, I'm really s-- "

"Why are you apologising? This is a guy with a gun pointed at you, Sam. Don't make his job easier."

"Sir, I -- "

"Will you show me the thing? Before you rub the type off all over your fingers?"

Sam hands over the text of the email without a word. Leo reads it through once quickly, then again slowly. Sam watches his eyes move down the page. Thirty words he will never need to read again; he had them memorised the very first time. And he doesn't suppose Leo's experience will be all that different. His eyes are solemn when he finally finishes with the paper and they seem almost translucent to Sam, straining to see in the bad light of Leo's office, wondering if what he can see is censure or pity or well-masked disgust. Leo holds the piece of paper out to him, as though he doesn't want to have it in his hands a second longer.

"Take this will you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Set fire to it or something."

"Yes, sir."

"Destroy it, Sam. I don't want that lying around the office. You have passwords on your computer? On your laptop?"

"Yes."

"Change 'em. I'm gonna send the tech guys in to see you and you'll be getting a visit from Agent Butterfield as well as I'm sure you'll have anticipated, but in the mean time I don't want any knucklehead mistakes making this worse. So, change your passwords. Don't let anyone else use your machines. Do not delete anything off the computers, okay? I have absolutely no understanding of what it is that they do with those things but when they dust for electronic fingerprints or whatever it would be nice if we hadn't already cleaned them up. Alright?"

"Yes, sir."

"And, would you say something, please? Besides that?"

"What would you like me to say?"

"Look, kid, I understand that this is ... sensitive. Personal. And I don't wa -- "

"Leo, you should know that the ... the relationship which probably caused ... which brought all this about is over. It's over."

Leo looks him up and down. He slipped on his glasses to read the email and is now staring at Sam from above their rims.

"Sit, will ya? I'm not bringing you up on charges, Sam. Sit down."

"Yes, sir."

"And stop saying that?"

Sam smiles, or tries to. It comes out a little strained.

"Josh didn't want to break any confidences."

Sam nods.

"He only told me that you'd got a threat. Nothing more than that, nothing about identities or personal information."

"Leo -- "

Leo holds up a hand again. "God knows, Sam, you were ... You stood up for me when I needed you. I'd like to return the favour."

Sam swallows, swallows words, all inappropriate, all deeply wrong. He looks up, nods. "Thank you."

"Sam, I couldn't give a damn whether you sleep with men or women, and I think I speak for everyone in the White House when I say that. I think I also made it clear that I'd like to keep all that stuff on a need to know basis - one where I get as few bulletins as possible. But if it's affecting work. If it's somebody here, in the West Wing, then I do need to know. And it needs to stop."

"I know."

"It has stopped, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Josh is a good kid but subtlety is not always one of his virtues."

Sam manages a smile. "Yeah."

"Sam?"

"I ... I shouldn't -- "

"Someone close?"

Sam looks up into Leo's pale, tender eyes. He swallows again, nods. "Yes."

Leo nods: assent, agreement; nothing more needed. Sam isn't sure he could have managed to say the actual word in question, and so is glad that Leo is as good as a telepath.

"You need to tell him, Sam. You need to tell him soon." The emphasis is done with a slowing of the word as it emerges from Leo's mouth, standing in for the name neither of them will say now, almost slurred by the gentleness in Leo's voice which socks a fist into the pit of Sam's stomach.

"I know. I'm lacking a plan," he says, looking up again and trying to smile, to laugh it all off.

"This could be him too."

"Yes."

"That idiot book by that guy. The gays in the military legislation you've bo-- that you've been working on. Even the State of the Union."

"'We have not, nor will we ever, allow that the rights of the minority are lessened by the weight of the majority and we will seek solutions that live up to a promise which was made to all the citizens of this great nation: the pursuit of a life shaped by choices, and not curtailed by prejudice.'" Sam quotes, unhappily, letting a long curling sigh escape from underneath the final word.

"Yeah," Leo says, his eyes dark grey now, clouded with compromises. "Yeah. Funny how the rules always turn out so different to the ones you thought you were making, huh?"

"Yeah."

Leo nods. "Go on. Go tell CJ. We'll wait on the President for a while, alright? I'll let you know."

"Yes, sir."

"Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"If you need me to come beat some sense into him, just yell, okay?"

Sam smiles, properly this time. He realises that his hands have stopped shaking. He breaths out a long sigh. "I will."

"Okay. Go on, get out."

*

"So," CJ says, "You really weren't kidding with all the 'gays in the military, marriage recognition, Association of Rainbow Patriots' stuff, huh?"

Sam smiles. He can't help it. "I guess I wasn't."

"Well, happily, I've already hammered all this out with ... " The pause is too long. It does not want to offend, or get itself into a conversation which cannot be dropped in less than a minute.

"I just have to say this one thing: if everyone is going to refuse to say his name around me, then working here is going to get increasingly difficult."

She raises an eyebrow at him. "With Toby."

"Okay. Thank you."

"Sam, I -- "

"CJ, I don't have many ways left to say that it's okay and that I'm sorry and -- "

"No, don't let a death threat stand in your way, Sam, be just as pissy as you want."

He sighs, rubs the index finger and thumb of his right hand into his eyes. "I'm sorry ... I ... I just had this with Leo and ... "

"I want to say 'it's okay to be angry', is that too much like a shrink?"

"Not much like my shrink."

She smiles at him. "It is, you know. Okay, I mean."

"Yeah, I know. Actually I don't need any help with that right now. And okay that's mostly the adrenaline going sour in my system and having a completely unmetaphorical gun pointed at my head and the fact that he's in there practising lines for ... "

Sam looks up at her, daring her to react. CJ's eyes are as close to expressionless as they ever are out of the Press Room. Sam takes in a deep breath.

"Sorry. I'm ... I'm sorry."

"No, I'm not getting a big anger deficit here, Samuel. I am, in fact, getting a massive profit margin. If you'll excuse the metaphor."

"It's possible that ... "

"You're hopping mad?"

"Yes."

"With this guy? With this situation?"

"Yes."

"With the Republican party members who would eat out on this for a month if they got the memo."

"Yes."

"With Toby," she says. It is not a question.

He can't help wondering if his own hesitation is genuine, or only her expectation of him fulfilled. Sam himself can't tell anymore. He nods.

"Yes."

"Yes," she says. "And now my spin boys are ... at a standstill?"

"Please -- "

"I'm running on empty here, Sam, it's been three hours since caffeine passed my lips. So excuse the lack of originality in my language."

"I didn't mean -- "

"I know you didn't. But I'm serious. If this is going to be a problem for us -- "

"It's not."

"Sam."

"It's really not. I can do my job, CJ, and I think you know that as well as anyone."

She nods, smiles. "Yes, I know. I just wanted to hear you say it."

He narrows his eyes at her. "You are secretly in cahoots with my psychiatrist, aren't you?"

"No, sadly I am completely lacking in cahoots. Although I have been watching more daytime TV lately."

Sam grins. "If I find his number on your callsheets ... "

"What makes you think I can't locate a bottle of white-out?"

He laughs soundlessly; she nods, with a grim smile on her face.

"So," she says, "Are you going to tell him?"

2.

Staff is called early that day, as the sun is just rising into the sky. Toby feels only half awake after a troubled night of more waking than sleep, in which he listened to the rain and remembered scraps of poetry which didn't seem so important after dark as they had that morning, sticking on his tongue because all the rhythms are coming out wrong. He knows something has happened about which he knows nothing: Josh is quiet and restless and will not meet his eyes as they stand in Leo's office, waiting; CJ has spent much of the morning calling him inventively insulting names but she squeezed his arm as she left the room to get a memo she left on her desk and her eyes were full of something very like sympathy; he hasn't seen Leo at all this morning, and he has not seen Sam either.

As the clock turns to five minutes past the hour, Leo and Sam come into the office together. And Toby feels the air change around him, somehow: a thickening, a gathering of concentration directed towards him, though neither Josh nor CJ have looked up from their papers and Sam is staring down at his shoes. He looks pale; Leo like he's gearing up for a fight. Sam is holding a piece of paper in his hand, and Toby thinks his hand is shaking a little. He looks away, quickly.

"Okay, a few things," Leo begins, "Firstly, CJ, you need to quieten the room down on this thing with Senator Buckley and the capital gains mess. This is not the best time for that guy's knucklehead vendetta."

"Do I have permission to make him cry?"

"You always have that permission as far as I'm concerned, CJ. Secondly, the President is gearing up for a couple hundred breakfast tv interviews this morning with regard to our need to not depend quite so much on countries with a lot of oil reserves and little love for America. I think he might even have gotten five hours sleep last night so we're not expecting any major misadventures with the English language on this one.

"And thirdly. At around eight-thirty just over two weeks ago, Sam got an email. It contained a death threat. I've been on the phone with Ron Butterfield at the Secret Service and we're gonna be organising a security detail who you will get used to seeing around the place. We don't yet know where the threat originates but obviously we're treating it as seriously as we can. You'll also need -- "

"I'm sorry." Toby isn't aware that he is going to speak until he does; feels his mouth open, stupidly, with the news, and then fail to close. He listens to himself, and is frightened by how his voice echoes in the small, dark office. "I ... can we just back up here for a second?"

"What are you confused about, Toby?"

"Are we just treating this like ... " He hates the fact that he can't stop his hands waving about, trying to shape confusion and fear and incipient rage into something he can understand. "Like something we need to get cleared off our desks? What the hell happened?"

"Sam?" Leo says Sam's name so gently, and Toby knows in a moment, a one-syllable moment, whose desk this has been sitting on since yesterday, or maybe a little before; where trust has shifted. And, as he raises his eyes to Sam's, where trust has failed.

"It was an email threatening a hate crime."

"Which one?"

Sam smiles, or something like a smile twists on his face. "It was an anti-gays email, Toby. It promised, if somewhat obliquely, to kill me on account of my supposed sexual orientation."

For a moment, for a short series of moments, the visible world contracts into the small flood of light under which Sam is standing and the small pool of darkness in which Toby is standing, trying to remember to breathe. Sam's eyes are dark and tired, less blue than grey this morning, the way he looks when he hasn't had enough sleep; his tie is the same one he was wearing when they told him about how something the President had never said was going to change all their lives forever; there is a small nick just above the line of his jaw where he must have cut himself shaving this morning.

They don't stare at each other for long, a few seconds at most. Toby breaks first, dropping his eyes down to the line of Sam's collar, too fast; guilty, failing. He finds his throat dry and coughs, too loudly, conspicuous in his concern; in his more-than-shock. He is sure, now, that everyone in this room knows why he can't make any words come, even lies to save his own ass from the bullet coming for this kid, his Deputy: strange, special man, all straight lines and sunlight, whose absence would now define for Toby the shattering of the world.

Toby looks up at him. Sam's face is impassive, unyielding. And Toby knows he has lost, but he tries all the same.

"Sam?"

"Actually you're all much more concerned than I am."

"Sam, you can't just ... "

"You really don't need to tell me how serious it is, Toby. Everyone else beat you to that play."

"I ... I can't -- "

"But lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice, right?"

Sam is staring at Toby, facing him down in what might be a challenge, or a renunciation. Toby is locked into his gaze. And since everyone else is staring at them it takes a second or two for anyone to register the knock on the door. Ginger opens it, looking scared out of her mind.

"It's okay, Ginger," Leo says, breaking the closeness of the air like a thunderclap. "We're done now."

"I'm sorry, sir, I just wanted ... Toby, the President's ready to start the interviews."

Toby stares at her. Then blinks, lets his right hand take a long pass over his head, and exhales, slowly. "Yeah. Okay. I'll be right there. I'm ... I'm coming."

Ginger nods and retreats, closing the door behind her.

"May I read it?" Toby says, quiet enough to miss.

"I'm sorry?"

"The email, Sam, may I read it?"

"Sure," Sam says, handing over the piece of paper in his hand, "I brought you a copy." His arm brushes Toby's as he turns to leave, as he reaches for the door handle, and then he is gone.

*

Toby sits in his office after the breakfast television interviews are over and they have yet another screw-up to untangle, not even bothering to pretend, with his head in his hands. Tabatha Fortis's latest collection, the one which made her Poet Laureate and is to Toby almost indescribably beautiful in a way which is absolutely unlike his own work and any poor attempt of his at making plain words which are nothing to do with politics sing, is the hard rectangle of board and paper under his wrist. He has now read it, cover to cover, at least six times. He has a lot of it memorised and, in a different mood, would want to take this brilliant woman by the hand and ask her how it is that she has the heart of a man like him down pat, in six or seven lines of verse which are devastatingly spare and black and hard as diamond.

He thinks perhaps today he would dare to ask her a slightly different question.

On his other side, folded in half so that there is no chance of his eye idly catching its contents, is Sam's email. He read it twice, once for the words and the threat and horror and the inescapability of a bullet to the head, and once for penance. He has a vague idea that it was the night of the M.S. press conference, on the steps outside the State department building with Sam's hand pressed into the small of his back, Sam fingering his shirt cuff, kissing Sam in the shadow outside the White House and hoping no-one would see them.

Evidently someone did.

Because Toby doubts that one book they didn't even have to bother discrediting could have got them here, nor the gays in the military legislation which everyone knows damn well is a non-starter, or even that one paragraph in the State of the Union: plain and unadorned as it was, making no promises except those which are already sacred. Someone saw. And that makes it his fault.

A knock on the door makes him jump. He says, "Fuck," under his breath and then yells: "What?"

"Good morning, Toby."

"We're a little past good morning now, CJ."

"And I see the passage of time has improved your mood no end."

He sighs. "How can I help you?"

"You're the only man I know who gets more polite the more he wants to be shot of you."

"You'd prefer me to yell?"

"No, I'd prefer you to talk to me. With as little sarcasm as you can - I had my booster shot from Sam this morning."

"What would you like to talk about?"

"Toby, this is getting old really quick."

"CJ, I can't -- "

"Yes, you can. We don't need names, after all. We're all maintaining diplomatic silence. I think Leo's drawing up things for us to sign, with his left-over supplies of vinegar and brown paper possibly."

"CJ ... "

"Look, he's got Leo, Josh. And as much as I really don't want this to become one of those things where one half the office won't speak to the other half without the erection of a mock Berlin Wall made of paper and doughnuts, I wanted you to know that I'm ... here."

"I -- "

"And though you're a stupid idiot and I can't believe you did this, either of you, I meant what I said before - you were sweet ... the two of you."

"My main talent seems to be getting him shot at."

"Toby."

"You're going to tell me I'm exaggerating now?"

"Are you actually holding the gun in your hand?"

"CJ --"

"Then shut up. You don't feel guilty about this, you don't even start."

"I should have ... I ... I should have been able to protect him."

"Toby. With what?" she says, so gently, "Your magic cloak and force field?"

"It was my job," he says, in something just above a whisper.

"You're not responsible."

He looks up at her, knowing that there is a plea in his eyes: _make that true, please make that true_.

She looks at him, and he can't help thinking that she is beautiful, almost unbearably so, in the moments that he has made her unhappy. She turns and half-sits on his desk and reaches out for his hand. He smiles despite himself, and puts his hand into hers. She squeezes his hand; he gets up from his chair and kisses hers.

"Toby Ziegler, you'll sweep a poor girl off her feet."

He smiles at her, then looks her up and down. "No. I really don't think so."

"Is there anything you need?"

"No. I'm fine."

"I thought maybe give Tabatha to Sam after all?"

"No, I can handle it." He picks up the book by his elbow, waves it in the air. "Anyway, I've been reading up."

She nods. "Okay."

"Okay."

"I have to go lie about Robert Ritchie's IQ now."

"Knock yourself out. Raise it into double figures even."

She laughs, "Yeah. And, Toby?"

"What?"

"It's gonna be okay, you know? We're gonna be okay."

He nods, and hopes it looks at least conciliatory, if not convincing.

"I'll see you later, Cyrano."

3.

In the end, he takes Tabatha to his favourite bar. It's not a particularly salubrious place, but she's never been to D.C. before and he figures she should see the dives and the slums as well as the monuments. It is somewhere he used to take Andrea, before she became unable to put up with the rest of the clientele, and he half-expects to see his ex-wife appear from the other end of the bar, arriving to grin at him and stir her martini in order to keep from telegraphing all his come-ons to Tabatha. He wonders if he would feel less nervous if she did.

It's still the same place - bar sticky with miscellaneous alcohol and the odd remnants of stale snacks, seats filled up with men who look like him; broken old politicos and journalists and the odd misfit professor from one of the universities, and no-one under thirty-five in the whole place. It seems the correct location for a little self-indulgence and quite a lot of Jack Daniel's. He remembers being successfully unhappy here, when he first came to D.C. and seemed to have about five different jobs in each month but would only let himself spend a long night with the whiskey glass just as they started to look more promising; self-sabotage always his favourite method of initiating a job hunt.

It's a test too, for them both. For her to see if she really does like him enough; for him a chance to prove that this is not his life anymore, that dust does not always return to dust. Considering all that it isn't too surprising that he can't stop his hands shaking, just a little. But he is disappointed in himself all the same.

He isn't surprised to have found Tabatha beautiful and compelling; poetry gives away that much. He is surprised by his attraction to her, which is not based on those things but on some kind of understanding he cannot properly name in his head which if he were more sentimental he might try to call the telepathy between two people who understand words, and also understand that they are not always the best tools with which to communicate.

A little like that which used to exist between himself and Sam. And besides, isn't it always easier to tell truth to strangers?

"I didn't think you'd want come," he says, as she slides into the seat next to his at the bar, dressed like a hippy backpacker and carrying a bag with an old nuclear disarmament button still pinned to the strap.

She smiles. He wonders vaguely if she practises that look of enigmatic calm, or whether she borrowed it from his ex-wife - on a timeshare only available to women with exasperating husbands and lovers and those men who will never be either.

"How could I resist?"

He smiles back; his best smile. "I'm hard to resist."

"And anyway, I still haven't found any rhymes for 'Ziegler'. And I think the solution to that is to spend more time with the problem. So this'll help me stay on track." She laughs, throwing her head back a little: a cascade of curls, stray hairs trapped against her throat, twisting golden in the bar's poor light. Toby takes in a deep breath at the sight.

"Can I get you a drink?"

"Are you drinking Jack?"

"Ah, yeah."

"That'd be great."

He lets his mouth curl into a smile. "Huh."

"What? You thought I'd be more a cranberry juice kinda girl?"

"I really wouldn't like to say."

"You really are very cute."

"So you mentioned ... before."

"But I get the feeling this isn't a business thing. I've been charming, and polite and artistic and principled. And I've told you my sob story. All items on my list are struck through."

"Yes."

"So I was thinking this maybe wasn't business."

"No."

"So what's on your mind, Toby?"

He laughs, in that way he always hopes doesn't look nervous but always does. "I thought you liked talking to me."

"I do. I'm just curious about our topic."

"Ah, it'll get there. Don't force it."

She smiles, touches his arm. "Now you're talking like the poet."

"How are you doing?" he says, too quickly. "Are you ... are you okay?"

"Yeah. Meeting the President is ... different?"

Toby chuckles. "Yeah."

"He's an astonishing man, Toby. He's so ... powerful."

"Yes, yes he is."

"I don't mean the Eighty-Second Airborne and all of that. I mean ... the strength of personality, of belief. The texture of his voice. He'd have made an interesting philosopher. Or a poet."

"You didn't say that to him?"

"No."

"Thank god."

"That would have caused you some problems, huh?"

"It would have caused an ungodly amount of gloating."

She laughs. "Two days ago you were all about selling me the grandeur and dignity of the Presidency, Toby. What happened?"

"I'm off-message today."

"Yeah?"

"It hasn't been the most successful day. Very little in the way of dignity anyway."

"And do you want to talk about it?"

He looks at her, fingering his glass of whiskey in discomfort.

"It's okay if you do," she says. "You do owe me a sob story in return, after all."

"Mine isn't as good as yours."

"It doesn't get you any policy changes?"

"No indeed."

"So tell me."

"I shouldn't."

"Hey, the worst that could happen is a poem in five years time. Not a big leak for you guys."

He smiles, takes a sip of his drink, watching her over the rim. "I like that you know the terminology. I'm also going to hold you to that."

"I read up."

He chuckles. "Really."

"Yes."

He smiles, then sighs. "I can't tell you. I shouldn't have asked ... "

"Toby?"

"A friend of mine ... I can't, I just -- "

"Toby, I promise you, I don't know whether that makes any difference to you, or if the surveillance guys are just over my shoulder right now, but I promise. You helped me. I'd like to return the favour."

"It's important that you understand, I have friends ... people I could talk to about this, I just -- "

She lays her hand, light as air, on his arm again. He sighs, takes a breath.

"A friend of mine, he got a death threat a few weeks ago. I just learned that today. And I'm obviously having a little trouble with the idea."

"I'm sorry," she says, like someone who is waiting for the piece of the story she hasn't yet been told.

"I can't get it out of my head that it's my fault. That I'm the reason ... " He sighs. "I'm not making any sense, am I?"

"Some. Is he a close friend?"

"Yeah. A close friend."

"Right."

"He has a psychiatrist. And I've got this bar."

"Why aren't you talking to him about this?"

He smiles. "You're good."

She smiles back. "I've been told that."

"We're ... not really talking."

"Uh huh."

"Yeah."

"If it were me, I'd tell him how I felt. But I get the impression you don't like that idea so much?"

"I find it ... difficult. To talk about how I feel."

"You're talking to me right now."

"Yes, but you're a beautiful woman."

"So it's harder when it's a beautiful man? That's an interesting double-standard coming from a prominent Democrat, Mr. Ziegler."

"Exactly what did you read when you were reading up?"

She laughs. "I know people, Toby. That's all."

"Of course."

"You should talk to him."

Toby stares at her. "I can't."

"It's sweet that you're old-fashioned, Toby."

"I'm ... what?"

"You're old-fashioned. Classic. You think it matters half a damn that you're sleeping with a guy?"

"Past tense," Toby says, half to himself.

"Slept then."

"It matters, Tabatha."

"Hence the lack of a conversation with your friend."

"Yes."

"But, you know, and I'm sorry for saying this: it's a stupid attitude."

"Thank you."

"Do you care about this person?"

Toby drops his eyes from hers. Drains his glass and then looks back up at her. "Yes."

"I know you think this is easy for me to say because I'm a poet and therefore open to ideas and concepts and ways of life which are harder in practice that they are in theory, but Toby, this is just shooting yourself in the foot."

"It is easy for you to say."

"And I'm not denying that."

"But?"

"But ... your fire, Toby, your strength. Where does that go? I've read the things you've written, I've heard the speeches. The State of the Union this year. And I can hear ... I think I can hear you there. Your belief. The passion you have. What happens to that?"

"It gets leaked, Tabatha. It gets twisted out of my control and I'm looking for a new job Monday morning."

"It shouldn't matter," she says, frowning in that way which makes her look beautiful and naive at once.

"It does."

"I know."

He smiles despite himself. "You're learning."

"You're a good teacher," she says sadly. "I kinda wish you weren't."

"You remind me of someone," he says, softly.

She nods. "Yeah."

"Thank you ... for coming."

"I needed a rhyme," she says, smiling at him.

*

He calls Andrea as soon as he gets home, which is sometime after midnight. She doesn't sound tired or surprised that it's him and she already knows what he tells her, even if her conclusions have, he hopes, come out of a different logical progression. _Sam got this email and it should have been me, it should have been me._ She says she heard it through a friend on the Ethics Committee and doesn't sound even a little bit exasperated when Toby offers to come in tomorrow and re-arrange that friend's internal organs.

She talks to him, about little things. The stupid joke she overheard at her coffee place, the criminally stale pie in the OEOB mess, the little girl she saw in La Fayette Park, playing in the fallen leaves. He is soothed, by increments, and hardly even notices.

He tells her that he doesn't know what to do anymore, that nothing he can say is the right thing. He tells her that he met the Poet Laureate the other day, and that she loves the way he writes. He tells her that he is afraid of going to sleep tonight, because he is expecting a particular nightmare in which he never makes it up those steps in time and there is blood all over the concrete. He confesses everything except the one thing he ought, and in return she proves that some loves never wear thin enough to break.

She whispers down the phone to him, as she might to a child. He falls asleep with the phone in his hand.

4.

"I think he's gonna want to know, Sam."

"There's no reason -- Look, he doesn't need to sign off on this, right? This is a staff ... This is your remit, right?"

"It is, yes."

"So, why -- "

"Because the next time you go with him to an event at the Kennedy Centre or a town hall or board up on Airforce One he's probably gonna be curious as to why one of his guys seems more interested in the skinny kid with the ink on his fingers. Stop being an idiot, Sam."

"I ... I can't bear ... I keep wondering what he'll think of me, afterwards."

Sam looks up at Leo, trying to look brave, understanding that he isn't making the grade.

"What, that you had an attachment to someone. That you cared about someone? That it wasn't the best choice but you've been working to make up for that and anyway whose goddamn business is it anyway who you go to bed with? That you serve at the pleasure of the President and that is the first and the last thing. You know, Sam, I'd be okay with him thinking that."

"Leo, I -- "

"Have some faith, okay?"

Sam nods. "Yes, sir."

They haven't yet told the President, or so Leo says. Sam is scheduled to meet up with the guys from the Secret Service this afternoon - Mike Casper, Ron Butterfield and then a follow-up with the team of guys who will be trailing him around for the next however-long. Leo will be there, and as far as Sam knows, no-one else. Except that he's pretty sure that when he is standing Leo's office as they are almost done, there will be a twitch at the door to the Oval and a voice at once fatherly and like that of a small-time stand-up comic will ask him if he would perhaps like to explain just exactly what is going on.

Therefore it is, Sam thinks, fair to say that he is approaching the meeting with a certain amount of trepidation. It's a slow day anyway, full of briefs he doesn't want or doesn't need to read and a comparatively quiet Bullpen in which to think desperate thoughts and be unable to get any real work done. Toby is in meetings all day, most of them in the Roosevelt Room, and though Sam is pretty sure he hasn't done so on purpose, he is sitting in the seat which allows Sam, as he sits at his own desk, a perfect view of his back and shoulders, jacket pulling taut across them as he leans forward to gesticulate a point which doesn't seem to be going down all that well with the guy across the other side of the table. Sam watches Toby's hand come up to his forehead, unable to parse the gesture exactly: disbelief, fatigue, exasperation or ordinary anger. Could be any of them, or nothing at all.

"Almost better than tv," Sam says, under his breath.

It's almost three now. A few more minutes to go. He counts the seconds with the movements of Toby's hands as they wave patterns in the air like kids with fireworks. He does look angry, as far as Sam can tell. And Sam wonders what it is that Toby has to be angry about, safe as he is, loved as he is. The switchboard messed up a call transfer this morning, while Toby was up on the Hill in a different meeting. It was from Andy and she had started before Sam could summon the wherewithal even to clear his throat.

_I was thinking you could come over, and by thinking I mean that I've already cleared a space in my diary and so you are now bound to oblige me. We could finish that appalling wine ..._

Sam had stopped her there, accepted her apologies, answered her polite queries about his own health and asked her in turn, promised to ask Toby to call her. She sounded to him like someone with a secret, or at least someone on the verge of a secret, and Sam had asked Ginger to pass the message on to Toby because he couldn't bear the idea of saying the words himself.

He startles at the knock on the door, realising that he has been on the verge of sleep, watching Toby, dreaming. It's Leo.

"Okay. You're on. Let's go."

And so, they go.

Meeting the Secret Service, for Sam at least, never gets any less unsettling. Mike Casper shakes his hand and his face betrays nothing of the mutual reproach they shared at their last meeting; now Sam is a genuine customer and he isn't making that great a job of being scared and defiant at once. Ron Butterfield leads the show however, explaining about false ISPs and Trojans and trace-route tools, explaining that this one is personal and definitely something to take much more seriously than Sam appears to be, like he didn't know that already. Evidently that's something else he's not making a great job of. Leo stands at the back of the room, facing the door to the Oval Office, trying - so Sam reads it - not to look expectant. He could almost laugh at the scene.

He has turned his back on the Oval door, looking at some of the traces Ron has done, nodding at the explanations which are going completely over his head, when he hears the click, the turn of the lock.

"So, Mister Seaborn, was it really Colonel Mustard in the library with the fountain pen?"

"Good afternoon, Mr. President." Ron Butterfield's voice, heavy with respect.

"Good afternoon, sir." Leo's, heavy with something else which sounds very like a warning: please try not to terrify the kid.

"Hello, sir." His own voice, finally, which sounds cracked and resigned. Maybe just a hint of sarcasm, or hysteria. He isn't sure, right now, that he could tell the difference.

"Oh, Sam. I'm sorry about all of this."

*

It's late when the day's last knock comes. A shadowy figure at the door that shifts from foot to foot. He won't come in from under the lintel and when he speaks, Sam closes his eyes.

"Hi."

"Hey."

"How are you?"

"You know, I think that is the one question I haven't been asked today."

"That good, huh?"

"Something like that."

"You meet your agents?"

"Yeah. This afternoon."

"Good."

"I learnt today that there is nothing the President doesn't already know before you tell him."

"Yeah. I think we all learn that one."

"It's been a long day."

"Yeah."

"Can I ... Did you need something?"

"Look, I have a ... I was thinking -- and you don't have to say yes to this, I just thought ... "

"Toby?"

"I have a friend who likes ice hockey. I haven't been able to break it to him yet that it's a terrible sport, so he still insists that I come with him. He's not going to be able to make it in. So I have two tickets, for tomorrow."

"Hockey?"

"Yeah. Look, I understand if -- "

"No. No, it's okay."

"Sam?"

"Come get me, okay?"

"... Yeah."

About two-thirty Sam hears his office door open and knows without looking who it is. Toby clears his throat and Sam can hear the noise his hand makes smoothing down his tie, a gentle rustling hardly even there, magnified in the silence which exists only for them. He watches Toby get his - Sam's - coat down from the peg and fold it over his arm, waiting. Sam allows himself a smile at small instincts of courtship not yet extinct in him, still charming if a little inept; if still clumsy with the hearts he still owns. Sam sighs.

He shuts his laptop, wonders about his pager but decides to take it just in case he needs a way out, gets up and takes his coat out of Toby's hands. He shuts the office door, Toby tells Ginger they'll be back in a little while, a couple of hours at the outside. Sam thinks that might be a little optimistic of him. They walk to the gates slowly, both of them tripping over their steps. Toby's breathing is unusually quiet and Sam feels as though his own heartbeat is abnormally loud, echoing through the corridors and giving this thing a significance it shouldn't have. Neither of them speak and Sam wonders, not for the first time, about this odd binary existence they have with each other now: all anger and sarcasm and idiot jealousy on the one hand, and fear on the other - the fear which comes from longing, still clutching onto each other, maybe more scared than ever to let go.

Sam thinks of Toby's face in Leo's office that morning. His pathetic intakes of breath, like someone trying not to drown, and that sight provoking Sam's fury, when now he is sure he would fall to a different set of emotions; when now he wonders if he would take that soiled piece of paper to Toby first, and give himself over to the trust he had thought shattered.

He knows this feeling will only last until the next time he hears about Toby's dates with his ex-wife, until the next thoughtless thing. Until Sam has his inadequacies written up as a report and conveyed to him as so much West Wing gossip - how Toby always ends up taking his problems right back to the missus and how they can talk, no matter what. But right now, walking in step now without having realised it, that doesn't seem so important.

The game is awful. Sam can't grasp the appeal of hockey anyway - why all the biggest guys (and none of them are exactly small) don't just stand in front of the goal and beat the other team to death. He says as much to Toby, once they've forgotten their proximity to each other sufficiently to be able to talk and not just sit and sweat like a couple of teenagers on a first date that is. He just chuckles, soundlessly. He's just watching the game for something to do; a reason not to talk, a reason not to watch. He doesn't even turn his head to peek.

The Capitals lose in the end, badly, or so far as Sam can tell. And maybe that is the best measure of the success of the evening. As they walk back to the White House together, slowly, dodging more tourists that Sam thinks he's seen in a single day since he moved to D.C., Sam realises he does have something to talk about after all.

"You know what I realised?"

"What?" he asks, in his softest, most misinterpreted voice.

"I can never be President now."

Toby turns his head sharply. His eyes as they meet Sam's are bright, appalled.

"It's true. One unsigned note, to get Harrison off the bench. One lie to censure the President. And I was thinking: Laurie, the shooting, and now this?"

"That's ... they were ... It's not the same."

"Oh, really?"

"Things ... times change, Sam. They -- "

"You really think either of us will see an openly gay state governor in our lifetimes? Let alone a President. It's okay, Toby. I've had a while with the idea now. It's okay," he says again, in that voice which is meant to make it clear that it absolutely is not okay.

Toby shakes his head. He mutters, "It's not the same."

"I like that you're really an optimist, Toby, deep down."

"Take this seriously, can't you? This is your life. This is your career for chrissakes!"

"And I'll be sure to call you first if I need any help screwing it up, Toby."

His face contorts to the left, half-grin, half-grimace, his tongue stuck in the side of his cheek. He lets out a breath of air which might be the start of a laugh.

"Sorry. I ... That was low. I apologise."

He shakes his head. "No. That's okay. More or less fair."

"No, Toby -- "

"I'm good at what I'm good at."

"You're the best out there."

"Okay, now I know you want something from me. And you should know already that flattery doesn't work. Whiskey works. Not so much outright lies."

His eyes are still bright, with anger now. His face is very still, his body charged as though with static. Sam can almost hear the crackle in the air.

"I'm not lying, Toby. And I think you know me better than that. Or I thought you did."

"I'm going in now."

"Toby -- "

"And I suggest you do as well."

And so it goes, Sam thinks, watching his steps back up to the gate. Until the next stupid thing.

5.

That night knocks on Andy's door around ten-thirty without having given her the courtesy of an advance warning and wonders if she will mistake him for a burglar and tackle him to the ground at her doorstep. He decides this is only wishful thinking. She opens the door with a look on her face so black that it even stands out against the night. The hall light picks out the stray strands of her hair, red for danger. But she smiles when she sees him.

"You came."

"... I did."

"You ... didn't get my message?"

He shakes his head. "Was it telepathic or ... "

"Doesn't matter. Are you coming in?"

"I'm too old to loiter on doorsteps, Andrea. Those days are behind me."

"Well, you were never any good at that bit anyway. Come on."

*

By the time they arrive at his door Sam has begun to wonder if he will ever again have peace from casual callers. Josh drapes himself around the doorframe, CJ peeks in from over Josh's shoulder. Donna is standing on the other side of the glass, holding Josh's coat.

"We've come to abduct you," Josh says.

"I think my Secret Service detail might have something to say about that."

"Josh plied him with cheap whiskey," CJ says. "It's all goin' fine, _keed_, we gonna bust you out."

"When did my life become a film noir?"

"And not even a good one," she says. "It's all downhill from here, Samuel."

"C'mon, man. It'll be fun. You know that bar on D street?"

"The one I hate?"

"The one everyone except Josh hates," Donna adds from beyond the doorway.

"It's really not that bad."

"Joshua, it's a _dive_. I still have the grease under my nails from last time."

"Then you should clean your nails more often, CJ. Naw, c'mon. It's a good place. It's got atmosphere."

"And plague, possibly," CJ says, under her breath.

"If I agree to come, will you stop bickering?" Sam says, smiling in spite of himself.

"Get your coat. And lock up. By the time we're done with you you won't be fit for anything except passing out."

"I'm sure the Secret Service will be thrilled to know that. I'm much easier to watch when I'm unconscious."

"But you say that to all the guys, Sam," CJ says, hitting him gently on the shoulder with the back of her hand.

"Tasteless?" Josh asks.

"I figure it's not really worth putting up the fight on this one."

"Good boy."

*

They don't talk, because talking usually leads to fighting. It's easier to drink generous glasses of horrible wine and lie back on her couch and listen to the sound of the suppression of whatever it is she wanted him here to talk about. Andy is still, coiled almost. Patiently waiting for him to get drunk enough that he can safely be allowed to hear whatever it is she wants to say. Toby closes his eyes for a while, doesn't sleep though, not quite. He hears her get up and move around in the kitchen, open the refrigerator, close it again, pop the top off first one bottle of beer and then one more and he smiles to himself.

"You shouldn't mix your drinks, Andrea," he says, softly, as she returns to the room.

"We have no choice. You finished the wine."

"What if I'm not thirsty anymore?"

"What if I'll believe that when I see it, pokey?"

"It's good that you still get off on judging me."

"It is, it is," she says and though he hasn't yet opened his eyes again he knows she is smiling and that there is the faintest mark of a blush over her cheekbones. She knocks the cold bottle against his hand and he curls his fingers around it.

"Thank you."

"Toby?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you drive?"

"Did I ... What?"

"Nevermind. I hate that car, I'd recognise it if you parked it half a mile away in the middle of an eclipse but since you parked it under the streetlamp outside my house -- "

"Andy, is this going someplace? Anywhere at all?"

"You're a little plastered, honey."

"No, I am not."

"Oh for heaven's sa -- "

"_No_. I am not."

"_Yes_, you are too. So get used to that couch, mister. It's where you're sleeping tonight."

*

CJ was heard to remark afterwards that it was the night she realised who Josh had caught his horrible maudlin drunk's nature from. They each bought Sam a drink and each time he asked for Jack Daniel's straight up and each time they put the glass in front of his increasingly horizontal body he, Sam, believed that they did not realise the significance of the drink and therefore the cause of his melancholy. That they had all bought rounds for groups of people that included Toby Ziegler many times in the past seemed to have slipped out of Sam's memory.

And none of them have ever been very good at break-ups (Sam included) and so none of them know what to say to the spreading black sadness in Sam's eyes, like a pool of split ink reflecting the scant light of the dive bar back at them each time he raises his head to look at them. It's a look they're all much more accustomed to seeing in a face like Toby's, not a face like Sam's. And this confuses them, even more.

He doesn't seem particularly worried about the death threat anyway and between them they cannot decide whether this is a positive thing or not. The Secret Service agents have become impressively invisible in remote but strategic points of the bar; two tall men who ought to look as out of place as it is possible to look when wearing immaculate suits and carrying powerful sidearms, but do not. They are eaten by the shadows of the bar and hidden by the apathy of its patrons, who don't care to give them a second glance. Sam doesn't look at them either. Donna thinks this is because he believes it will jinx the whole enterprise if he does; CJ thinks he really doesn't see them; Josh thinks he is just too drunk to care.

Sam doesn't talk about anything in particular. Certainly he never so much as mentions Toby's name, even as drunk as he is. But all his sentences and digressions and wanderings around the point which are twice as bad now he has some sour mash inside him seem to come back to the same unspoken, pathetic point: a difficult shard of love still nestling in his heart, still burrowing inwards; a twisting-up in his gut never to be unravelled; a little spark of hero-worship still alive and glowing in his eyes, not yet put out by sadness.

Donna tells him he'll get over it. That maybe he should get out more, y'know, meet some people. Date a little. Then sits back in her seat looking embarrassed and upset, as if nothing she could say would ever help. CJ also looks upset for a little while, as if she can't decide who to feel sorriest for. Then squeezes Sam's shoulder and whispers something in his ear. Something about love. Josh has been looking angry for the longest time, since Sam's second glass of Jack, in fact. His upper body is almost twitching with contained emotion, the bounce of his step as he gets up to go to the bathroom like an uncoiling spring. But when they get up to go and Sam is stumbling-drunk, losing any rhythm his steps might ever have had, Josh puts his right arm around Sam's waist and his left on Sam's shoulder and leads him out, smooth and tender as an oiled motor.

They put Sam in a cab and Josh gets in the other side, waving the others off, calling out that he'll see them tomorrow. Only Donna notices the way Sam's head falls on Josh's shoulder, eyes closed, mouth muttering, and the way Josh turns and kisses Sam's hair. A light kiss, nothing special. But Donna would (had she been asked, and had she agreed to tell) have described Josh's expression as protective, almost exaggeratedly so; serious grey eyes and stiff shoulders, fingers splayed out over Sam's skull like a mother holding a baby to her breast. And she's seen that expression before. It is the one she would catch in his face sometimes in the days after the shooting, interrupting him with a cup of coffee and a stack of urgent memos in the middle of a phonecall to the hospital, or to Toby. Angry, and not only about the bullets in his best friend's belly and his inability to nail the guys who had been holding the guns to the wall. Something always on the edge of his sentences. Something wrong which he cannot fix, or tell her about. Something creeping in his heart, grey and unwanted.

And Donna knows what that was, now.

*

"You still have my clothes," he says, without inflection when she comes into the den bearing a pair of striped pyjama pants and an old Yankees tee which is definitely his over her arm. He frowns.

"Well, you never did come over for that suitcase after ... Back then."

"No. That's true."

"And the goodwill's always ... "

"Full?"

"Full, yes."

She grins; he does too. She doesn't know, because she refuses to come back to his apartment on the grounds that she doesn't want to undergo traumatic flashbacks, that he still has a silk scarf she used to tie around her hair, a blouse god knows he gets no use out of and one half of a set of earrings he found one day at the bottom of a briefcase he no longer uses. Magpie urges, he thinks. Easier to deny than the other kind.

He keeps the earring - little hoops, with amber beads - in a bowl with his change. When he is running low on quarters and nickels it gleams at him and, sometimes, the morning sunlight on the gem is exactly like strong summer light in her hair. And he calls himself a sentimental idiot on those mornings and arrives at work in a filthy temper, but he never throws the thing away.

She has slipped into the space next to him, crumpling linen and blankets. She is staring at her hands, linked between her knees. They look cold and thin and, insofar as hands are able, unhappy. Toby wants, for a second, to reach out and fold them inside his own, but doesn't. There is a moment coming and he doesn't want to step on it. Coming slowly, cresting on the momentum of their mutual inebriation and vulnerability to each other: her hands pink and quick and wrung together and his shirt and tie and jacket lying discarded over the back of the couch. His cell phone, still switched on, just in case. It always was before but he never paid it any attention then, or pushed buttons for functions he doesn't really understand just in case he had missed some small sliver of news, about a person not there. He picks the thing up, fiddles with it uselessly, and then puts it back down on the coffee table. She watches him, and when she speaks her voice is brittle.

"How is he?"

"Huh?"

"Sam. How is he?"

"Not taking this anything like seriously enough."

"He's just faking, Toby. You know that. He doesn't want to worry you guys."

"The death threat got us worried pretty well all on its own."

"Yeah."

"He's actually a terrible liar."

She smiles. "Yeah."

"I've spent all week thinking ... "

"_Toby_."

"I mean, just the law of averages ... He said, he actually said to me: lightning doesn't strike the same place twice. Like that's as good as a bulletproof vest, an uzi and six guys on your security detail. Trouble is I think he does believe that. Like he's done fighting. Like he's ... "

"It's _Sam_. He's not done. He's nowhere near done, Toby."

"Yeah."

"So you can stop feeling responsible for every bruise and scraped knee he gets in the process. Okay?"

"Yeah."

"He's gonna be alright. They will find this guy and take him in and it'll be okay."

"Yeah."

When she runs the backs of her fingers along his naked upper arm he doesn't shiver, and that surprises him. It is this surprise which makes him look up, not that she is touching him in a way which is not quite meant to be comforting and not quite meant as an enquiry about seduction. Her fingers are cold, as they always are, but his skin feels colder when she stops stroking his arm and returns her hands to a loose clasp between her knees.

"I saw that little girl again," she says, in a whisper which fills up the apartment like smoke. "In La Fayette park."

"Yeah?"

"I was kinda worried about her folks actually ... "

"Andy?"

"I mean, letting a child of that age ... with no supervision. Anything could ... "

"_Andy_."

"I was worried I was imagining her, Toby. I was actually worried about that." She tries to laugh, but it chokes in her throat. He frowns, and feels his body stiffen with discomfort, out of practice as he is at saying comforting things.

"I'm sure you -- "

"Turns out her mom picks up up from there. By the swings. She was telling me all about it."

"Andy ... " He doesn't mean the warning note to stick in his voice and override the gentleness he tried to temper it with and he flinches when she looks up at him, sharply, already on offense against an attack he hasn't yet made.

"I was _worried_. She's seven years old, for crying out loud."

He raises his hands, palms outward. "Okay."

"Of course," she breaks off with a short, bitter laugh, "Then her mom did actually arrive and gave me a look like I was going to rustle her out of the park in a Bloomingdales bag. So that was the end of that beautiful friendship."

"I ... don't know what to say right now."

"Just don't say my name like that again and we'll be just fine, Toby."

He blows out a hiss of breath through his teeth; she turns her head away from him, so he can only see a sweep of straight red hair and the irregular movement of her own breathing. It takes him a moment or two to work out that she is crying and since his first impulse is to say her name and lay his hand on her back and begin to stroke her hair, it takes him another few moments to react. Then he goes ahead and does it all anyway.

She laughs when he whispers her name as though she might turn and strike him at the very word, even if the laugh is a little tearful. She turns so quickly against his arms that he can't help the curl of his body around hers; not instinct so much as an action demanded by the strangeness of the combination of her sharp elbows in his side and the wetness on her face, like a little girl herself, helpless and angry because of it, and his the only warm body for miles. He sits there in the too-small Yankees tee and his work pants and belt, half in and half out of the makeshift bed, holding her in his arms and thinking about the lists of names they had for the children who were never born, none of which now seem right.

"Do you ever think about it?" she asks, in a real whisper this time, one which slips under the edge of his hearing, almost lost in the rustle of his hand against her hair.

And even though it would have been a lie as little as one hour ago, Toby says, in a voice thick with unexpected emotions, "Yes."


End file.
